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May 20, 2009
Source:
The Global Crop Diversity
Trust
Declarations of sovereignty and
independence are not uncommon as rites of passage both for
countries and teenagers. What we typically see and experience is
altogether different, both at home and in the world. Dependency
and interdependency are the norm, whether we look at human
relations, commerce, or biology. As the conservationist John
Muir put it, everything is “hitched to everything else in the
universe.” And perhaps this is as it must and should be.
We dabble with danger when we act as if we are self-reliant and
can “go it alone”, when in fact we are not and cannot. Our
hubris tempts us to behave as if we are unhitched.
Five Faces
Dependency has five faces. Let’s look at them.
Foods
Most countries and cultures rely predominantly on foods from
other regions and countries. The most important food crop in
southern Africa is maize, a crop domesticated in the Americas.
An FAO study quantified this degree of dependency on
non-indigenous crops and found, for example, that Ghana and
Italy were equal in their dietary reliance on crops originating
elsewhere. Imagine Italian cuisine without pasta (made from
wheat, first domesticated in the Near East) or pasta sauce (with
tomatoes from Central America). Think of the impact on food
security if Ghana no longer produced its top two food crops:
cassava and maize (from South and Central America).
Genebanks
We sometimes think of developing countries as “gene rich” and
developed countries as “gene poor.” This was certainly the case
in the Neolithic Age, but that was 10,000 years ago. And
incidentally, there were no countries then. If one considers the
diversity held in genebanks – the diversity accessible for plant
breeding – everyone looks poor, individually. Climate change
will present growing conditions different from those ever
experienced in country after country. Would any nation, rich or
poor, developed or developing want to claim “independence” with
so small a share of the global total of stored samples, as
illustrated in Table 1?
Moreover, most countries lack genebanks capable of providing
long-term storage of crop diversity. An even closer look reveals
that they can’t or don’t supply the bulk of breeding materials
used in their own national crop improvement efforts, meaning
that many countries are effectively dependent on a handful of
genebanks globally that conserve crop diversity adequately and
service plant breeders everywhere.
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Crop varieties
Look into President Obama’s pedigree and you will famously see
ancestors from Africa, America, and Europe. Look into the
pedigree of a modern crop variety and you will see something
similar. Most new varieties, whether released and grown in
Canada or Cambodia, will have drawn upon other varieties from
multiple countries for various traits. Virtually no new crop
variety anywhere has a pedigree drawn from a single country.
Call that interdependency at the ground level.
Global interdependence: "Veery" Wheat
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Sources: Payne T. 2009 - International Maize and Wheat
Improvement Center - Personal communication |
The two maps show the source
countries of breeding materials that went into the creation of
the famous “Veery” wheat variety, and then countries in which it
was released to farmers. What can we learn from the maps? That
many countries contributed and many countries benefitted and
continue to benefit. Over and over again, this is what one finds
when examining the use of crop diversity in agricultural
systems.
Trade and Food Prices
The 3000-mile Caesar salad is a feature of the modern world, at
least for the time being. Food travels. Food systems and diets
depend not only on local produce, but also on the success of
farming systems on other continents. A country does not have to
produce these crops, it only has to import and consume them, in
order to be dependent on the breeders and genebanks that keep
such crops afloat. This is why we should care about the genetic
diversity of bananas, even if the crop isn’t grown in our
country. We eat bananas, and somewhere someone is producing them
for us, and relying on them as an income source for themselves.
When supply and demand become severely imbalanced, prices rise
and we term the result a “food crisis.” One way of avoiding this
is to ensure the stability of production, not just in one
country but in all countries. This cannot be done without
deploying genetic diversity in breeding programs and in the
field. Viable collections of crop diversity are a prerequisite.
Environment
Finally, successful and sustainable agricultural systems are
environment-friendly. Poor and unproductive agricultural systems
encourage – indeed, require – people to expand cropland, cut
down trees, and plough marginal lands to produce more food. How
much of the world’s deforestation and subsequent loss of
biodiversity is really due to unproductive farming systems and
crop varieties?
The forests of Latin America depend on the productivity of crops
from Asia such as soybean, and access to genetic resources to
make those crops productive. The forests of Africa depend on the
productivity of crops from Asia (rice) and Latin America (maize)
and access to the genetic diversity of such staples. As Table 1
indicates, that diversity is not to be sourced “locally” in any
one country. It must be pieced together from multiple countries
and seedbanks and used to make agriculture more productive and
sustainable. Again, we return to dependency and interdependency.
Our Common Future
Current food supplies and future food security, as well as our
fragile environment, are all dependent on crop diversity.
Take a good look at any country: the comparatively small amount
of diversity held in its national genebank or its farmers’
fields is clearly inadequate by itself to ensure agricultural
productivity, much less the adaptation of its agricultural
system to dramatically new climates. Assertions of independence,
however passionate, cannot alter this simple biological fact.
It is self-evident that our common future depends not on our
particular country’s “national” collection, but on our
collective success in fashioning a viable global system for
conserving crop diversity for use by plant breeders everywhere.
We come full circle. Sovereignty and independence play well in
certain political circles and amongst many teenagers, but are
out of place in the biological sciences. In the real world of
agriculture and crop diversity, we are hitched. “We are,” in the
words of Martin Luther King Jr., “caught in an inescapable
network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny.”
Cary Fowler
Executive Secretary
The Global Crop Diversity
Trust |
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